Thursday, April 19, 2012

For the first time

There's a line in a U2 song that sometimes reminds me of the kids at Blue Dragon:

For the first time, I feel loved.

It might sound corny, but I've seen this over and again with children and teens who come to us, having never before found someone who genuinely cared for them.

Last week our social workers asked one of the Blue Dragon girls to write about her life, entirely from her own point of view. We do this occasionally as part of our reporting to donors and keeping records of our impact.

The girl's story is below (translated into English, but otherwise true to the original). I've changed only the names of the people. It's a deeply touching story.

My name is Van. I am 12 years old. I was born in a very poor family and
I didn’t know where I came from until I knew Blue Dragon. My mum left me and my
father when I was more than 1 year old. My father didn’t have a job so everyday
my father and I worked on the street. I couldn’t go to school because I didn’t have a birth certificate. We rented a small room to live day by day. We had to
face hunger, cold and so on. But my life wasn’t only that sad.

When I turned 9 years old, my father died on his way to work. Some
strange people took my father to the hospital but he died that day. I now have
no relatives. I didn’t know where to go and how to look after myself.

After my father died, I lived with a woman who wanted to be my adopted
mother but she never considered me as her child. She called me by a very bad
word. She asked a school for disadvantaged children to allow me to study there. But
when I studied at grade 2, she didn’t let me go to school anymore. She treated
me very badly. I had to work with a parking guy at a lake in Hanoi from
8am to 10pm. I often was beaten by the woman and forced to work very hard and
late at night. I wasn’t allowed to go to school and had no idea of how special
and real childhood should be.

Day by day I understood that this was not the life
that I wanted, but I had no power to escape. I was afraid of who
would feed me, who would give me a place to stay... So I kept silent and waited for
a chance.

One day, I met a staff member from Blue Dragon, his name is Thai. He talked
to me in a very soft and warm way. That was the first time in my life a person
cared about my feelings and asked me what I wanted. My owner knew about that and
she wouldn’t let me meet him again. She also threatened Thai and warned him to not talk to me again. But Thai and Blue Dragon staff still approached me when they
could and talked to me.

One day after that, I was beaten very badly by my owner. I ran away and came to Blue Dragon to ask for support. There was a social worker
and psychologist who talked to me. Even though I was very sad and frightened
about what happened, they made me welcome and relaxed.

I knew that my 'mother' wouldn’t let me go easily like that. She threatened Thai, the
worker who tries to protect me. However, Blue Dragon still continued to help and
protect me by asking the police and a lawyer to be involved in making sure that I
am safe and secure.

Now I don’t have to work on the street for that woman. She treats me
better as she knows that someone is checking what she does with me. In
addition, Blue Dragon is looking for my brother who I have never met to help me
to get out of her control. I go to school in the mornings. Blue Dragon is
helping me to make a birth certificate. I also have a chance to be a child
and join in many different social activities. I hope I will learn well so I can discover
the world, and maybe even study overseas.

6 comments:

"I was beaten very badly by my owner" - I broke down at those 2 words "my owner". NO child should ever have to live like a slave! Heck, NO ONE should.

I think you've written about this young girl before. I'm sure things are much better now for her that Blue Dragon is helping her, and wish with all my heart that she'll achieve what she hopes for in life. "Studying overseas" - an easy thing for some kids, and yet seems such an impossible dream for many others. Breaks my heart...

A heartbreaking story. It frightens me that young children like this are so badly wanting ( and deserving) of love. I can only give thanks that such a vulnerable young girl came across blue dragon and not some leech who could take advantage of her.